Symphony of Stars
by Scarabbug
Summary: A series of short fanfictions inspired by music and song lyrics. NOT songfics. Chap. Five: Two Academy students discuss their names. Futurefic.
1. Head Held High

Symphony of Stars.

**These are not songfics. Let me just get that fact out of the way right now. I'm not a fan of them, and they're illegal on this site, anyway. They're short stories **_**inspired**_** by songs. I discovered a talented writer by the pseudonym of Scribbler doing something similar (except she gave herself more rules), and decided I'd like to give it a shot myself. **

**Standard disclaimers apply. Reviews and concrit are both appreciated. This fic takes place during the episode "**_**Measure of a Man**_**". The moment I heard this song the name "Jean Luc Picard" burst into my head like a rock salt bullet. Trust me, it fits. **

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_**1. Head Held High, Anchors for Reality.**_

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In a sense, the Admiral is right. He _is_ a universal constant.

It feels as if he's been here for eternity –light-years away from his French vineyards and the solid, comforting beams of his old family home. That life is a distant memory crafted with wood and the scent of old caskets. _Reality_ for Jean Luc Picard is here and now in the depths of Space. Reality is the _Enterprise_.

But he doesn't imagine it really brings any stability to her universe, knowing that he is still out here; commanding, leading, and carrying out the duties that she would've seen him stripped of a long time ago. The time of his life involving her is not one he enjoys harking back to.

And yet here she is. Here _he_ is. Because for all their complications and all their colliding sentiments of attraction and repulsion, she _is_ the only person who might see a way out of the current mess of Rights and Regulations keeping Data trapped between destruction and personal liberty. This entire situation is like a complicated game of Poker –with a life and sentience at stake, instead of chips and reputations. And Phillipa Louvois holds all of the cards in the palm of her elegant, commanding hand.

'_I'm glad… you felt that you could come to me_.'

He was untruthful in his dismissal of her tone as arrogance, and she knows it. Lets it show in every glimpse and gesture she makes which isn't affected by guilt and recollection. And there _is_ guilt. Or at least, regret. He came to her for help, because she is the best one suited to provide it, not because of any circumstantial requirement.

Her ruling may once have almost stripped him of his command, but be damned if it will strip his Second Officer of his life.

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"_It's gonna come down to this,_

_Another tear shed is another lesson learned."_

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	2. Hero

**These are not songfics. Let me just get that fact out of the way right now. I'm not a fan of them, and they're illegal on this site, anyway. They're short stories **_**inspired**_** by songs. I discovered a talented writer by the pseudonym of Scribbler doing something similar (except she gave herself more rules), and decided I'd like to give it a shot myself.**

**Standard disclaimers apply. Reviews and concrit are both appreciated. **

**When I heard this song, all I could think of was the destruction of the **_**Enterprise**_**, and that look on Deanna's face as it fell from the heavens.**

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_**2. Hero, Robert J Kral.**_

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She wonders, not for the first time, whether or not she has made a potentially cataclysmic mistake.

When Counselor Deanna Troi decided to take the examinations for which successful completion would qualify her to the rank of Commander, she knows that there were many things she did not take into account. The choices that a commander has to make are difficult enough in holographic form… She remembers the look on Geordi's face –artificial, yet far too real, as she sent him to his death in a radiation swamped compartment.

Still. She had made that choice, she reminds herself now. She had _made_ it. Though she didn't enjoy it in the slightest, enjoyment was not always a luxury of command. Since she had come to understand this, Deanna felt, too, as if she had come to understand Will better. Before then, she hadn't even been certain that were possible.

To choose who lives and who dies. To sacrifice one life –your own, if necessary– for the sake of others. These are the choices that heroes must make. Deanna understands this, just as she understands the choices that a Counselor must often take between harsh truth and softer explanations. But the decisions are not the same.

She is perhaps not _used_ to these choices. Not like this. Not in the form that Will just made. Now, as she sees the planet looming before the view screen; feels the cold , desperate reassignment of Will's thoughts behind her – still reeling from the destruction of the first half of their beautiful ship. _His_ ship. Their ship. Enterprise. Pioneer. Explorer's vessel. _Home_.

The word '_home'_ echoes loudest of all. Not just on the bridge, but through every mind and every heart that she can sense on board the Saucer section. Yet she still clings to the control chair of the Enterprise, and struggles with the controls that will no longer listen to any of her commands, and she knows that their ship is doomed.

There is chaos within seconds. Explosions from bursting control panels, shattering from torn rickets and paneling designed only to deal with the tough, cold, emptiness of space –not the solidness of land. _Noise_. So much _noise_. People's thoughts sputter and shudder in her mind in fear and panic and urgency. The next thing she knows Data is upon her, shielding her from the shattered fragments of what was once the bridge. She feels the urgent spark of his panic. His irrepressible urge to protect her shining through like a beacon as he grabs hold of her shoulders and pulls her away from the falling debris.

She feels as she has never felt before. Somehow, even above the shuddering piece by piece destruction of the _Enterprise_, Deanna can feel one thing which dwarfs even the fear.

_Love_.

Other a thousand minds' worth of it. Other a thousand minds saying goodbye to their home and praying that they survive the outcome. A thousand minds that understand the choices the First Officer has made.

This is a decision they have made also. They will live with it.

And somehow, it feels like a little more bearable to know that it is a choice they made together, in reality, as a crew and family, rather than just as one person, alone with a crowd of holographic imitations without the soul and depth of the originals.

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	3. Set Fire to the Third Bar

**These are not songfics. Let me just get that fact out of the way right now. I'm not a fan of them, and they're illegal on this site, anyway. They're short stories **_**inspired**_** by songs. I discovered a talented writer by the pseudonym of Scribbler doing something similar (except she gave herself more rules), and decided I'd like to give it a shot myself.**

**Standard disclaimers apply. Reviews and concrit are both appreciated. (NB: Since I don't recall them specifying which ship Tasha served on before the Enterprise, I took a guess...)**

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_**3. Set Fire to the Third Bar, Snow Patrol.**_

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Turkana Four feels a lot closer than it really is, some days.

There are the dreams she had some nights, which used to be nightmares but have become less and less frightening the more and more in control she feels with her own destiny. Yet she still has them. She hardly even thinks about Ishara anymore, until those dreams…

Space and time are measured in warp speed. A million miles is literally nothing to the Nebula Class _USS_ _Farragut_. A billion can be crossed in the time it takes her to plot a course on the control panel. The breadth of a universe is measured in mere finger lengths across a 3D holographic projection of its planets, orbits, and geographic phenomenon. Tasha Yar did not live a privileged childhood (anything but, in fact), but even she can't imagine a world where humanity was confined to a single planet.

But there was a time like that, apparently. In the beginning there was the earth, and it's multitude of tales and wars and history books and gods: the kind of things that nobody ever really thought about on Turkana Four. Life was too hard there for anyone to imagine some kind of loving god that might be looking down on them. Just like in history books. The words felt no more solid and meaningful than the lines drawn across a universal map. They're just lines. They don't mean anything.

So perhaps it's understandable that Turkana Four should feel so close that she could tap her comm-badge, whisper a command to a transporter room officer and just _go_. And Ishara will be there…

She could see Ishara, if she wanted to. If she _really_ needed to.

Tasha tells herself this every evening, as she sits in the on-ship drinks kiosk and shares a few fond (and not so fond) memories with her colleagues, even though she knows it isn't true, the repetition remains almost reassuring. When she knows that the apparent briefness of distance between them is nothing more than parsecs away. It makes her feel better to think of her sister's smiling, eight year old face on the other end of a transporter's signature blur.

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"_I find a map and draw a straight line_

_Over rivers, farms, and stateliness, _

_The distance from me to where you'd be_

_It's only finger lengths that see…"_


	4. The First of Me

**These are not songfics. Let me just get that fact out of the way right now. I'm not a fan of them, and they're illegal on this site, anyway. They're short stories **_**inspired**_** by songs. I discovered a talented writer by the pseudonym of Scribbler doing something similar (except she gave herself more rules), and decided I'd like to give it a shot myself. **

**Standard disclaimers apply. Reviews and concrit are both appreciated. **

**This song screamed of Data in Descent (Part Two) to me. **

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_**4. The First of Me, Hoobastank. **_

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He had not anticipated fury.

True, he had not anticipated _anything_ in particular, to begin with. Except possibly a catastrophic failure throughout his entire neural net. The whole experience had not been something his diagnostic subroutines were capable of identifying and repairing instantaneously. Something he could repeat only in form, in the same manner as any mental or technical skill could be repeated, and not in feeling. Perhaps, he considers briefly, things would have been different for Lal, had her first experience of emotion _not_ been that of abject terror.

Anger.

Towards the borg, first of all. Crushing the one-time creature's neck within his fist. The initial surprise had been that his neural netways did _not_ collapse in a rapid fire cascade malfunction immediately afterwards. The second surprise…

There had been no second surprise. The sense of any _feelings_ dissipated along with the rage and pleasure he felt at the destruction of the Borg drone. There was nothing more. The anger had exploded like a million signals firing inside of his head at the same time, conjoining into one action simultaneously as if it were what they were meant to do; then it had vanished again, and there was no way to resurrect it. Until Lore chose to make it so.

Rage. Pleasure. He understood these things now. Understood them, as Ira Graves had once insisted so furiously that he could not. He understands what it is that he has missed out on for the entirety of his life.

He understands too that he cannot hold onto them. Not if he wishes to return home. To the _Enterprise_. To where he belongs. To his… _friends_.

Geordi.

Data has nearly killed his best friend.

He understands 'friend' now, too. He understands the depth of his betrayal. He understands that perhaps, this is the end of that friendship, which he has only just begun to comprehend.

Perhaps it is this thought alone which gives him the strength of will (something he has never needed before, and now likely never will again) to fire the phaser.

The opposite to emotional awareness is emptiness –a lack of awareness. An absence of something which he knows now _should_ be there, but is not, simply because his father chose to make it so.

Data opens the access panel on his brother's cranial plate, and resigns himself to that emptiness. To the fact that what he is dabout to do constitutes as wrong, even despite their circumstances, yet it is nessecary for the sake of others. Or at least, for the sake of his own moral coding.

_'I love you, brother.' _

Data had not anticipated hatred.

…But he had anticipated this even less.

'Goodbye, Lore.'

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"_It's harder than it seems when you're told that_

_All your hopes and dreams are yours to hold_

_If you just give them what's expected,_

_Something they can sell, and put upon a shelf_

_But I am not for sale, I am not for sale." _


	5. Name

**These are not songfics. Let me just get that fact out of the way right now. I'm not a fan of them, and they're illegal on this site, anyway. They're short stories **_**inspired**_** by songs. I discovered a talented writer by the pseudonym of Scribbler doing something similar (except she gave herself more rules), and decided I'd like to give it a shot myself. **

**Standard disclaimers apply. Reviews and concrit are both appreciated. **

**Whether or not this one has any canonical sense to it is anybody's guess, but it was fun to write. **

**

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**

_**Goo Goo Dolls – Name.**_

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She says his name quietly and clearly, breaking what had previously been a rather nice, companionable silence. 'Data...'

'Yeah?'

'Nothing; it's just... that's a really unusual name, isn't it?'

'I think that depends on which species you're talking about.'

'Heh. I guess it does. So, is there a humanoid race in the universe that insists on naming itself after technology, that I don't know about?'

A chuckle. 'Esther, your mom's a cross-species counsellor, you spent the first fourteen years of your life on a Constitution Class Starship, and your chosen specialised field for the year is _Interspecies Cultural Conflict_. If you don't know about it then it probably doesn't exist.'

She smiles and flicks a peddle at him, which misses and bounces away into Boothby's perfectly manicured flowerbeds. 'True enough. Though _Interspecies Cultural Conflict _is just the fancy way of saying "_why can't these two species stuck on the same planet get along_?"So whose idea was it to call you that, anyway?'

The boy shuffles uncomfortably. 'My mom, and it's kind of a long story. '

'Is there a condensed version? Or am I going to have to go nosing around in your Academy Records again?'

'Well it's...' he starts talking, then stops, dark eyes widening in alarm. 'Hold on, you've been looking up my personal...? Esther!'

She laughs without meaning to. She can't help it. The look on his face is absolutely priceless. 'Sorry, sorry, but I was curious and you point blank refused to tell anyone.'

He squirms again uncomfortably. 'Look, I was kind of in a catch twenty two on the name' stakes, one name was as strange as the other and—'

'Ahhh. Yes, I remember. What was it now? Umm...'

'_Esther_.' There's a warning in his tone of voice. Esther ignores it. She always does.

'I _think_ it began with a "J"...'

'Esther, I am asking you as a friend _not_ to finish that sentence.'

She falls back on the grass, laughing until her stomach hurts. 'Oh come on, you can't blame me, Jean-Luc.' She sniggers and the boy winces as if in physical pain. '_Jean-Luc Data Riker_, I mean that name hardly rolls off the tongue, does it?'

Data –middle name or not, he'll _always_ be Data– sighs impatiently. 'If you say so _Esther Jerusha Valentine Barclay_, I'll have to take your word for it as an Expert on _Interspecies Cultural Conflict_.'

A brief silence. '...That is _not_ fair. This is immature, anyway. We're fifteen years old, not _seven_. Why should we care what other people think of our middle names? _Or_ our first names. _A rose by any other..._ and all that?'

'Ha! Quoting the greats of history won't help you now, Valentine. You just don't like having your own weapons turned against you. And anyway, your middle name isn't _Rose,_ it's Jeru—mmph!'

'Say it again and suffer, Riker!'

She removes her hand from his mouth only when she's absolutely certain he needs to breathe too much to think about finishing his sentence. '...Point taken.'

Satisfied (for now), Esther leans back, frowning as she gazes across the academy greenery. She represses a silent urge to call her father up and complain about his taste in names. 'You realise, of course, that we now have a predicament.'

'I wouldn't call it that. I'd say we have more of a mutual agreement.'

She finds herself grinning again. 'Mutual agreement, huh?'

'Sure. You trust me with your middle name and I'll trust you with my first. Neither of us can tell anyone without risking our own pride. At least not until we're a high enough rank for nobody to question the taste of our parents.'

She gazes at him firmly, for long enough to work out whether or not he's playing another of those silly mind games with her. '...Okay, deal. Do we spit on it?'

'Oh , please. Like you said, we're not seven years old.' He leans back against the grass, arms folded behind his head. 'Actually, I kind of like it really. Jerusha, that is. It sounds very... dramatic.'

'Hm. More dramatic than being named after software, anyway. And where does the name Jean Luc even come from? It sounds French.'

His eyes shine. 'It is French. My father grew up on a, every weekend we had to speak in it, and we trained our dog to answer commands only in French.

Joking. He's joking. And not joking particularly well at that. '...And they say Betazoids never lie.'

'_Quarter_ Betazoid. And we can appreciate a joke as much as the next non-telepathic species out there. And you know we're going to be late for class if we don't hurry up and get our behinds off this hill...'

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_You grew up way too fast  
Now there's nothing to believe  
The reruns have become our history  
A tired song keeps playing on a tired radio  
And I won't tell no one your name  
And I won't tell your name_


End file.
